There may be hope for Shenmue III yet. At the Monaco Anime / Game Show, French TV journalist Sebastien-Abdelhamid interviewed series creator Yu Suzuki, who said he is considering crowdfunding to develop Shenmue III.

“Yu Suzuki said he is considering crowdfunding like Kickstarter to fund Shenmue III,” said Abdelhamid.

In a separate tweet, he added: “Yu Suzuki would also continue the story of Shenmue through anime or manga.”

it would be cool if they release Shenmue HD Collection first to gauge and bring back some interest.

then if they made enough money, but not enough for a 3rd game, kickstart it :)

would love to have the saga in one collection :)

ddsfan2

I agree! It would be especially nice to be able to play on Sony platforms, (especially considering the following for the Yakuza series) as well as the fact that I’m not even sure if the XBox versions of Shenmue 1&2 work on the 360.

AdverseSolution

Yup. They have to test the water out first

Kurisu Makise

No reason not to do an HD set of Shenmue 1/2 and while we’re at it, Skies of Arcadia needs an HD release too. That sounds like a better test as I’m not so sure one can kickstart what should be an expensive game to make. Unless the money used goes straight to…the DLC or something for all backers (and a signed copy by the legend himself) and the rest Sega decides to toss a bit of money at (honestly using the Yakuza engine, it probably shouldn’t cost nearly as much…), then if you sign an exclusive contract with a console (timed exclusive), to lock in the hype, should sell alright ^^ /dream =(

PrinceHeir

actually i don’t mind using the Yakuza engine.

but for Shenmue, i think Yu Suzuki wants to push the boundaries even further.

still a Shenmue game with Yakuza 5 engine is not bad at ALL.

Kurisu Makise

I definitely think the Y5 engine can handle it!

http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob-Obb/100001994017630 Bob Obb

One word, two syllables: NullDC.

http://twitter.com/RSCL_Turtle Unknown

I’ve have never played a shenmue game, but I really would love this and buy it day one.

http://gematsu.com/ Zero

I’m almost positive that would get funded in record breaking time.

I agree with @PrinceHeir:disqus I would love to see an HD collection as well.

http://profiles.google.com/dnlblue Daniel blue

Would it really be able to raise enough cash? A current-gen Shenmue game might be MUCH more expensive to produce than most Kickstarter projects, even if you count the high-profile ones like Wasteland 2. The first two games combined cost about 70 million dollars to SEGA, and that was back on the Dreamcast days.

They could do as suggested by other people here and release the first games again to raise interest and seek traditional funding from there, and use Kickstarter to complement the budget. There are some games which did that, so it can be done.

http://gematsu.com/ Zero

Good points. To be honest, just thinking about it is complicated. Would it be a PC only game? If not, how much would they have to pay just to get the game on the consoles, or perhaps on the networks, if they decided to go digital only.

I think Sega has to be involved, simply because Sega owns the property. i wonder if Sega would be willing to cover the royalties and such? I’m not really sure how it would all work to be honest…

It would make no-sense at all to make it a PC only title. That would be suicide for Sega …. again.

They could do what they did with Bayonetta 2.

HeatPhoenix

SEGA didn’t do anything with Bayonetta 2.

http://gematsu.com/ Zero

I only mentioned PC only because of the cost and restrictions involved to get a game on consoles.

Nintendo decided to become the publisher for Bayonetta 2. They are taking care of the funding. So, yes, that could possibly happen here, but then you wouldn’t need crowdfunding if Nintendo or Sony decided to publish the game.

It would become and exclusive though, just like Bayonetta 2 did. There is a good chance that in the contracts, part of the deal was to make it exclusive to Nintendo’s consoles, etc.

Just a curious question …

So, if Nintendo did the same thing here, do you really think people would be happy? With all the Bayonetta 2 backlash, I doubt it. I guess it’s one of those no win situations.

Even if it took millions to make, I think there are a lot of people who would contribute a lot of money to this. I’ve never contributed to a Kickstarter before, but this is practically the one thing I would pay towards.

I don’t really want to see the story relegated to anime or manga to conclude the story. But I find it unbelievable that Sega hasn’t done a HD Collection for the two games. Just do it, Sega, ffs.

fallen

Even though Yakuza is basically the spritual successor to Shenmue (design-wise), I would l o v e for this to happen

http://twitter.com/SwimsuitHakufu ギャビン

Why the hell won’t they let this man make games? Really, he is one of the founding fathers.

ddsfan2

Even if true, he will still need to get an OK from Sega to use the IP. That said, I think the bigger issue is funding (needs probably $40-50 million) and assembling a good team, although I don’t see how this would be much more expensive than the typical modern AAA blockbuster game.

Budgiecat

he should do episodic chapters on PSN since Shenmue was supposed to be 20 chapters or so…

Aldridge517

I wasn’t aware there was a Shenmue 2

http://twitter.com/RaiuLyn Raiu

Never tried the Shenmue series before… I would like to try one if they making a sequel or some sort…

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamingHeroTetsuya TetsuyaHikari

You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to see some sort of hope to making Shenmue III a reality. I’d be more than happy to donate to make this happen.

The original game cost over $40 million to make, and that’s back in the PS2/Dreamcast day. As much as I want this to happen, I doubt it they can raise that amount of money (probably $50-$70 million).

Also the Shenmue belongs to Sega. Don’t they need Sega’s approval?

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamingHeroTetsuya TetsuyaHikari

I think you might be underestimating the hype for this, heh. I’m willing to put down a good $500 or so to help get the ball rolling. I’m just one person. Even if everybody only donated $5 or $10, they could still make it. PLENTY of people have been wanting this to happen for 10+ years now, so I’d be willing to bet a lot of them would take a good $50 or $100 out of their paychecks each week or so to help support this project if they knew it would help finally make it happen.

It really sounds like a lot, but if there’s one thing I’ve come to realize… It’s that we should never underestimate a fundraiser/kickstarter when it actually involves something that is in high demand.

EDIT: Just doing a little math here, but just from using your example at $50,000,000, if at least 1,000,000 people donated $5.00, then they would reach that goal. Of course, we know there will be plenty donating more than $5.00, so basically… They wouldn’t even need 1,000,000 donators to reach their goal if it was in fact $50,000,000.

So yeah, the goal may seem big on paper, but given how much hype there is for this project, I don’t see any problem with them reaching their goal if they decide to try this.

Are there really that many diehard Shenmue fans? the first two games don’t support your theory. If they didn’t buy the games back then why would they now? The reason why Sega don’t want to make Shenmue 3 is cause the sales of the first two were very underwhelming. Fan support =/= sales.

https://www.youtube.com/user/GamingHeroTetsuya TetsuyaHikari

You’d be surprised, haha. Also, the reason why Sega didn’t “want” to make Shenmue III isn’t because the sales for the first two were underwhelming. There were personal reasons behind it from Yu Suzuki, much how the series was supposed to be split into several episodes, but that idea was scrapped also.

There have been plenty of games that have got sequels despite low sales, so I can assure you that wasn’t the cause. If that was the case, they wouldn’t even be bothering with it now.